Thanks to the generosity of the American taxpayer, Wall Street is back, bonuses and all. Main Street, not so much. How can that be?

In The Audacity of Greed, labor activist and New York senatorial contender Jonathan Tasini examines the reasons and exposes the people responsible for the looting of America, from the bankers who funded their lavish lifestyles at the public’s expense to the politicians who stood by and watched it happen. Tasini argues that we need a cultural and philosophical revolution that punctures the fable of market fundamentalism and values the contributions made by ordinary Americans throughout the economy. On the policy side, he lays out seven proposals for a fairer economy. Here’s a the short version:

1. Raise the Minimum Wage
Increase it immediately to $10 an hour, with additional increases over the next five years until it reaches $20 an hour, which would begin to return some level of justice to working

2. Enact Medicare For All
Pass H.R. 676, the so-called “Medicare for All Now” bill, in order to enact single-payer health care. Aside from the moral issue of covering every single American and making health care a right, not a privilege, the passage of H.R. 676 would also save the economy hundreds of billions of dollars and immediately make American-based businesses competitive around the world with companies that operate out of countries that provide national health care to their citizens.

3. Ensure a Stable and Secure Retirement for American Workers
Create a national guaranteed universal pension plan, backed by the government, so that people can be sure that their retirement years will not be threatened by the wild swings of Wall Street.

4. Get Real About Taxes
Repeal the Bush tax cuts, and raise the top income tax rates—at a minimum—to 40 percent and 45 percent, and add a new 50 percent income tax bracket for those with taxable income over $1 million. In addition, tax investment income as ordinary income. Until we stop the moronic rhetoric that says that every economic ill can be addressed by cutting taxes, out political debate will be stuck in an ideological straightjacket.

5. Bring Back the Power of Unions
Pass the Employee Free Choice Act. The single most important step we can take to rebalance the levels of power in our economy is to increase unionization.

6. End the Legalized Corruption of Our Electoral System
If we want to weaken the power of “The Club” to make the rules that grease CEO greed, we have to first end the legalized corruption of our electoral system, which allows huge amounts of money from corporate interests to buy politicians from both major political parties. The only way to do that is to have publicly-financed elections.

7. Tie Executive Pay to Worker Pay
We need to push for changes that impose a proportional pay cut on executives equal to whatever pay cuts their workers are forced to take—and I would add that, given the level of pensions granted executives, it should not be a one to one ratio, but one that significantly scales back executive pensions in comparison to rank and file workers.